NEW YORK IS FASHION CITY; Parents, Here Are the Signs . . .

By TIINA K. LOITE

Published: September 5, 2004

THE first time it happened, I was changing her diaper. I don't remember her exact age, but she was already talking. Maybe a dozen words. As I reached for a new outfit, my daughter swatted it with her hand and said, ''No!'' A barely verbal child was telling me she didn't like the clothes I had picked out. She had her own sense of style.

I have another daughter, an older one. She never cared what I dressed her in, so she wore what I liked for most of her childhood. But Romy, the younger one, cares a great deal. Some children are prodigies of athletics or music. Mine was saying: ''I have taste. Let me show you.''

Since that day on the changing table, Romy has been a fashion designer. Before she was 2, she was picking out her own outfits each morning. Then she began to change her outfits -- about five times a day. When she could hold her first pair of Fiskars scissors, she started in on remaking her clothing. She began with T-shirts: off came a sleeve, then a hole here, a hole there, a slit across the neckline. She would make a series of small holes with her teeth. Long pants suddenly sported asymmetrical hems. (Romy was wearing asymmetrically hemmed pants when Armani showed the same look on the runway. She was wearing fringe well before that showed up on the runways, too. And layers? Romy has been doing layers for years.)

She wore things backward; inside out; half-on, half-off. She used ponytail holders to make little fabric ponytails on the bottoms of her tops. Everything was a creation, a production. This would not have been unusual in my professional life, where I am the picture editor for Sunday Styles, but this was my personal life, and she was 4.

Soon, she started giving fashion advice. One evening, when I was rushing to go out, I threw something on that didn't quite work. As I said goodbye to my daughters, Romy looked up and said, ''The turtleneck's all wrong.'' She was right.

Once, while shopping at Gap, she liked a pair of pink pants, but they didn't have her size. I noticed the same style in blue and suggested she try them. Her response: ''Ugh, blue is the bad black.'' She was 6.

That same year, we were walking around NoLIta. Romy liked to take her older sister's skirts and wear them as long skirts, or hike them up like a strapless dress. This time she wore the skirt long and had some crazy top and two different sneakers. Saleswomen who were taking a smoking break outside a boutique watched us walk by and yelled, ''Nice outfit.'' The kid has a following below Houston Street.

But the flip side of all this is being told by your second-grade classmates that you dress like a weirdo. Like any child, Romy can have her feelings hurt. But never if you say something cruel about her ensemble. She will stare, as if to say, ''You can't see what I'm doing with this, can you?''

She once asked if there was a fashion high school. I said that there is, and maybe she would go there. Without missing a beat, she said, ''Maybe I could be a teacher.''

This summer, Romy went to sewing camp. She could have gone to a spiffy day camp, with swimming and tennis and riding. Instead, she jumped at the chance to spend her summer days indoors, sitting at a sewing machine. She has made drawstring pants, a reversible vest, and a hoodie with matching ankle-length pants. Her favorite place to hang out these days is the fabric store. She is now 8.

Imagine when she's 9.

Photo: TA-DA -- Romy, 8, in a belt ensemble. (Photo by Norman Y. Lono for The New York Times)